| NSF Org: |
EES Div. of Equity for Excellence in STEM |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 21, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 7, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 1725879 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Jessie Dearo
jdearo@nsf.gov (703)292-5350 EES Div. of Equity for Excellence in STEM EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $741,804.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $889,754.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2018 = $10,000.00 FY 2019 = $137,950.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
21 N PARK ST STE 6301 MADISON WI US 53715-1218 (608)262-3822 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
550 North Park St Madison WI US 53706-1491 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
ADVANCE, Evolutionary Processes, Population & Community Ecology, LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Systematics & Biodiversity Sci, Ecosystem Science, Animal Behavior, Integrat & Collab Ed & Rsearch |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 0100XXXXDB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 04001718DB NSF Education & Human Resource 04001920DB NSF Education & Human Resource |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
This project addresses the need for safe and productive STEM education and research workplaces for each and every person studying and working in STEM. The project will likely result in systemic change in the geosciences and may become a model for other STEM disciplines. The focus is on the geosciences because it includes field work expectations and is one of the least diverse of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The project will develop bystander intervention workshops for department heads, chairs, and faculty to reduce incidents of sexual harassment and to properly handle it if it happens. The partners include experts from scientific and professional societies in geoscience, education, and professional development. The project team has experience leading successful professional development programs for faculty and early-career scientists. The project will transform teaching of research ethics of current and future geoscientists by addressing sexual harassment as scientific misconduct. The partnering organizations include: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brown University, California State Los Angeles, Colorado College, University of California Merced, American Geophysical Union (AGU), Earth Science Women's Network (ESWN), and the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG).
The project will generate systemic change for gender equity in the geosciences through development of tested bystander intervention workshops for department heads, chairs, and faculty to appropriately respond to, prevent, and eliminate sexual harassment. The novel contributions of the proposed activities include: 1) Designing a community-based approach to bystander intervention training for women and men academic leaders; 2) Updating curriculum for the ethical conduct of research to include sexual harassment as scientific misconduct; and 3) Incorporating geoscience-relevant scenarios into training and teaching materials, including field research and educational settings. The project aims to improve workplace climate at the institutional level, structurally, and individually. At the institution level by directly addressing academic cultures through the leadership of scientific societies and institutions. At the structural level through policies and processes that guide professional conduct and response to misconduct. At the individual level through education and empowerment of women and men with strategies for intervening in various situations of misconduct. The training material will include attention to the unique challenges faced by women with intersectional identities. The collaborations with professional STEM society partners will facilitate national dissemination, implementation, and sustainability. The model developed and tested in this project will be shared as a model for other STEM disciplines and could result in broader systemic change in the culture of STEM.
The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of women faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The ADVANCEGeo Partnership started as a collaboration among geoscience leaders from the American Geophysical Union, the Association for Women Geoscientists, and the Earth Science Women’s Network. The award goals were to: (1) Develop and test bystander intervention training programs with geoscience-relevant scenarios; (2) Develop curricula that define harassment, bullying and discrimination as scientific misconduct for use in research ethics training courses; (3) Disseminate training and materials via partnership with professional societies for sustainability; and (4) Develop a model that can be transferred to other disciplines in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Throughout the course of the project, the team produced and evaluated five workshops for researchers: bystander intervention strategies to respond to hostile and exclusionary behaviors, identifying and mitigating implicit bias in higher education, responding to implicit bias and microaggressions, developing codes of conduct for organizations and field teams, and developing field safety protocols through an identity lens. To inform the workshop development, the team collected data on the experiences of geoscientists through focus groups and a workplace climate survey distributed through major earth science professional associations. With new collaborations, the climate survey was expanded to the ecological and environmental sciences. These surveys generated the first data of comprehensive workplace experiences for different career stages and demographic groups in these disciplines and highlighted the need for organizations and professional associations to focus on retention for achieving a diverse workforce and student body.
To reach dissemination goals and meet demand for these workshops, the project developed a train-the-trainers workshop to build capacity. The team currently counts more than 30 regular trainers and facilitators. From 2017-2024, the team delivered 252 workshops to thousands of participants via academic departments, professional associations, non-profit organizations, and research labs and 100 presentations at universities, government agencies, conferences and research consortia meetings. The team also disseminated project findings through press releases and provided expert input through 68 media engagements. The project team also produced 28 publications in peer-reviewed journals and edited books.
The novel contributions of the ADVANCEGeo Partnership are the: (1) Design of a community-based approach to bystander intervention training for academic leaders; (2) Inclusion of harassment, bullying and discrimination into considerations of ethical conduct of research; (3) Tailoring of training materials to different disciplines with specific data and scenarios, including field research and educational settings, as relevant; (4) Focus on intersectionality in the development and implementation of training materials to better understand demographic trends in the discipline; and (5) Collaboration with professional association partners for national dissemination, implementation, and sustainability. Members of the PI team formed an LLC in December 2023 so that the workshops can continue to be offered after the award period has ended. This LLC also continues to support ongoing professional development and support with the ADVANCEGeo regular trainers and facilitators.
The workshop trainings have been successfully adapted to a variety of disciplines outside of the original geoscience audiences, including engineering, sociology, ecology, biology, physics, and dentistry. The project’s work on research ethics contributed to changing conversations about how to recognize the harmful impact of harassment and other exclusionary behaviors on people and processes in science beyond the geosciences. In addition, the team curates a widely-used online collection of resources identifying strategies for improving workplace climate and summarizing relevant research for scientists in collaboration with the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College (serc.carleton.edu/advancegeo/resources/index.html).
Last Modified: 11/29/2024
Modified by: Erika Marin-Spiotta
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